''But my life is finishing some kind of circle. ''When I got this phone call, I said, 'Yeah, O.K.,' '' he recalled with a grin. Selby has not only defied all the odds, he has also lived to see ''Last Exit'' being made into a movie. Emaciated, stooped and ghostly pale, he nonetheless seemed almost radiant the scene transcended his wildest dreams. Further back in the shadows, beyond all the activity, an impossibly frail-looking man drifted around the periphery of the vast room, a look of wonder in his enormous blue eyes. Surrounding the crowds of men, who looked as if they had just stepped through a time warp from the early 1950's, was a ring of lights and cameras and production assistants bearing walkie-talkies. ''It's killing us too!'' screamed an enraged worker in the audience. ''Our picketing has completely cut off their shipments, and it's killing them!'' said the union official urgently. The walls were plastered with strike posters, and the microphone was wielded by a union official exhorting his men not to break ranks despite a six-month strike. On one recent sweltering day, an abandoned sugar factory near the docks reverberated with the shouts of hundreds of angry men wearing fedoras, suspenders and baggy pants. All, however, were defeated by its structure as well as its content the characters vary from story to story, and the only thread linking the segments is their locale, unless you count graphic sexual acts, drunkenness and marathon orgies of drug taking.Īll of which makes the scenes unfolding lately in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn even more remarkable. Over the years, a variety of film makers have optioned parts of the book, hoping to make it into a movie. Selby's work remains deeply disturbing, it no longer carries the shock value it once did. Since ''Last Exit'' was published, the limits of acceptability have expanded considerably, and although Mr. Ciardi complained, ''but moved to the writing by no other purpose than to out-vomit, out-rape, out-bash, out-smear and out-stink every other literary roughneck on the scene.'' Tough Times for Author Selby was ''skillful enough as a writer,'' Mr. Joining the obscenity debate at home in The Saturday Review, John Ciardi deplored the harassment of books under ill-defined and inconsistent standards but went on to excoriate ''Last Exit,'' saying that while it should not be banned, ''damned it must be.'' Mr. In Britain, ''Last Exit'' was branded obscene by a London judge who ordered all copies destroyed by the police. Time magazine denounced ''Last Exit'' as a ''dirty book'' and complained that the author left out ''all the pleasant moments of life.'' Newsweek gleefully countered by pronouncing it ''a serious work of literature'' and dismissing Time as ''reacting as predictably as a laboratory animal in a controlled experiment.'' When ''Last Exit To Brooklyn'' was first published 24 years ago, Hubert Selby's violent, profane collection of stories immediately prompted a heated debate about its portrayal of life among the prostitutes, transvestites, vicious young thugs, striking union workers and ex-convicts inhabiting the Brooklyn waterfront.
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